1. Technical Field
Embodiments of the present disclosure relate generally to routers, and more specifically to maintaining routing information in memory constrained routers.
2. Related Art
A router refers to a switch, which operates at network layer. Thus, a router may receive an IP (Internet Protocol) packet on one interface and forward the packet on another interface determined typically by the header of the packet. Such switching of a packet from one interface to another interface is termed as routing when the switching decision is based on addresses at network layer (e.g., IP).
Routers maintain routing information, which often forms the basis for the switching function. The routing information indicates the specific interface on which to forward a packet, typically based on the destination IP address (though other considerations such as desired QoS, can also be considered in determining the path on which the packet is forwarded).
At least for a superior throughput performance, routing information is often stored in high performance memories (e.g., random access memory (RAM)), while routing packets. By storing in a RAM, packets can normally be switched/routed quickly. However, there are situations when a router may have limited memory available for storing routing information.
Aspects of the present disclosure enable packets to be routed, with reduced memory requirements, as described below with examples.
In the drawings, like reference numbers generally indicate identical, functionally similar, and/or structurally similar elements. The drawing in which an element first appears is indicated by the leftmost digit(s) in the corresponding reference number.